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Kinsey, Meier take men's, women's Double Pump titles

For the first time in a long time, Jonathan Kinsey stepped to the starting line of a road race on Saturday not knowing whether he would be able to finish.

The 28-year-old from Myrtle Beach, S.C., surprised himself by finishing two races at the Enmark Savannah Bridge Run and claiming first place overall in the Double Pump race that combines the times for the 5K and 10K races.

The Double Pump was capped at 900 entries, and race officials said that it sold out shortly after registration was opened.

Kinsey hadn’t run at all since he dislocated his hip six weeks ago, but he was able to complete 15 kilometers and three trips over the bridge faster than the rest of the field and avenge a narrow runner-up finish in last year’s Double Pump race. In 2012, he finished second in the Double Pump and his times were the second-fastest in the 5K and 10K races.

Kinsey, a student at Coastal Carolina University in Myrtle Beach and a former All-Southeastern Conference cross country runner at the University of Kentucky, finished this year’s Double Pump in a total time of 57 minutes and 32 seconds and was almost two minutes faster than his closest pursuer.

“I haven’t been running at all, so this is a huge accomplishment,” said Kinsey, who runs with Strictly Running, an elite running and training team for former collegiate runners headquartered in Columbia, S.C. “I actually started the 5K pacing a friend to win the women’s race, but I lost her and found myself in third in the 5K race. Then I came out in the 10K race and made sure nobody in the Double Pump got ahead of me.

“I was very surprised I was able to make it to the starting line, let alone finish both races, and it never occurred to me that I would win it,” Kinsey said.

The first female finisher, Alisa Meier, and her husband, Mike Meier, nearly scored a double in the Double Pump. Alisa Meier, who was a member of three national championship tennis teams at Armstrong Atlantic State University from 2007-11, edged second-place finisher Gina Goris by a minute and a half, and her husband, Mike Meier, finished just behind Kinsey to be the men’s Double Pump runner-up.

Alisa Meier was the female overall winner in the 2011 Savannah Bridge Run 5K race but was running in the Double Pump for the first time. She hasn’t run in the race during the past two years while earning a master’s degree at Boise State University in Idaho.

“(The Double Pump race) is really hard because in the 5K you go all out and then you have to pace yourself in the 10K race,” said Meier, who came to Savannah from the Ukraine to play tennis for Armstrong and is now a fitness and wellness specialist at Memorial Health University.

“In the first mile of the 10K, my legs were dead, and I didn’t think I was going to make it,” she continued. “But by mile two, I had gotten my second or third wind.”

Meier said the supporters and volunteers cheering along the race route motivated her with their yells of encouragement as she caught and passed other runners.

“Once people started screaming, I started to go a little faster,” said Meier, who finished with a combined time of 1:03:03 and was almost exactly four minutes behind her husband. “I was seeing people in front of me and thinking I could catch them, and the cheering was really nice.”